George Bush and the Military Draft: Fears and Facts

The following text has been recently circulated both on the web and into thousands of email boxes in the last few weeks, and here at EDGE we have received several emails asking why we have not been covering this important issue:

"There is pending legislation in the House and Senate (twin bills: S 89 and HR 163) which will time the program's initiation so the draft can begin at early as Spring 2005 - just after the 2004 presidential election. The administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public's attention is on the elections, so our action on this is needed immediately."

Included in this writ are four facts supporting the above warning:

- The fact that $28 million has been added to the 2004 Selective Service budget.
- The fact that the Selective Service must report on system readiness on March 31, 2005.
- The Pentagon has begun to fill draft and appeals board positions.
- Congress has introduced two bills, S. 89 and HR 163, recommending the implementation of a military system wherein all persons aged 18 thru 26 would have to perform a mandatory period of service.

Complicating the issue is the fear that evading the draft would be far more difficult than in prior instances of wartime due to new US/Canadian border regulations, gender/class reforms to the Selective Service system, and the elimination of higher education as a potential shelter.

In accordance with the media's responsibilities regarding both the dissemination of news and the analysis of its impact on our readers, the refusal to print half-truths and uninformed opinion as fact means newspapers in general have refused to give air to fear-based (and often incendiary) accusations against any Administration or Congress, current or otherwise. Here are the truths about the Selective Service and its potential impact on private lives in this time of seemingly continual warfare.

TRUTH #1: The activation of the Selective Service cannot be predicted.

On Wednesday, September 18, 2002, in response to a question about the draft, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld indicated that there was "not a chance" of reinstituting the draft. According to Rumsfeld, the military is successful in attracting and retaining talented people in sufficient numbers to pursue its campaigns worldwide. Regardless of Rumsfeld's insistences, reinstatement of the draft would generally require a military emergency; legislative action by Congress and approval of the President would follow.

TRUTH #2: The four facts stated above do not directly relate to any intent by the Bush Administration, or by Congress, to reinstate the draft.

The $28 million added to the Selective Service budget is in fact a small budgetary percentage increase, not a prelude to activation. The system is also required to reevaluate its effectiveness every year - 2005 is no exception - and continually looks to fill vacancies in its ranks. These are not new realities; the very reason the Selective Service exists is to maintain a level of military readiness, and it cannot do so without maintaining its budget and cadre of personnel.

There are, in fact, two bills in Congress - both introduced, ironically, by Democrats in January of 2003. They are currently stalled, and it is highly unlikely that they will ever pass. They were developed more to balance the class/race inequalities of the current US military, and not to engorge the ranks of the military - they would also be the most unpopular laws passed by any Congress in history.

The more instrumental factors in the potential reinstatement of the draft is the increasingly anti-war sentiment of the American populace, and the spiraling approval rating of our current Administration. Foreign policy, it can be argued, should never place American lives unnecessarily at risk; for that intent would defeat the very purpose of government.

TRUTH #3: The likelihood of the draft's reinstatement is more in your hands than in those of our government.

Nearly 40% of the troops currently in Iraq derive from Reserve and National Guard troops; and given the terrorist activities surrounding September 11, 2001 and the years following, the impossibility of a military emergency that invokes the draft is not a foregone conclusion. A truism in the military has continually been "the enemy gets a vote," and the benefits of global aggression leading directly to anti-American sentiments at the hands of the Bush Administration in order to "defeat terrorism" can be debated; in any case, they definitively impact the culture of worldwide conflict in a significant way.

Our country's actions in the wake of September 11th have produced more death and loss than did the terrorist attacks; and they arguably engender tremendously more risk to our collective welfare than a more collected, political response could even have achieved.

Rock the vote, folks. Worry less about your registration with Selective Service and more about your registration as an American voter. And let your intelligence, not fear, guide your decisions.